The 50th Anniversary White Album Box Set Nov. 9th

As we all age there are those markers and reminders of our past. Mine in many instances are musical time slots or anniversary’s or flashes from years back. Many of the great groups albums are being remixed and re-released in newer digital conglomerations, solos or box sets. These remastered albums give new life and new opportunity to enjoy and bring in new, fresh ears, fresh outlook…..and what fun that is.

A telephone rings in a corner of Giles Martin’s private mixing room at Abbey Road Studios, catching the latter- day producer of Beatles recordings by surprise. “That never rings,” he says, reaching over to pick up the receiver. It’s his wife, Melanie, calling from their 23-acre farm about 80 miles away with happily urgent news: Eggs laid by one of the ducks they keep alongside sheep, horses and other farm creatures were starting to hatch. By the next morning, all seven eggs will yield ducklings. “Martin, 49, is visibly relieved at the farm report, which may well be a good omen for another sextuplet delivery he’s shepherding into the world: a seven-disc 50th- anniversary box set revisiting the Beatles’ 1968 double album “The Beatles,” colloquially known as the White Album. It was, in many ways, the Beatles’ most ambitious, most sprawling studio creation and demonstrably the biggest commercial success of the group’s fabled career: It has sold more than 19 million copies in the U.S. alone, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America, the body that awards gold and platinum certifications. The new edition is due Nov. 9, 13 days short of the actual 50th anniversary of its release Nov. 22, 1968 and it follows last year’s 50th-anniversary reissue of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” That was the first Beatles album to be fully remixed, not just remastered, for a new generation of listeners as well as fans who grew up with the original. The “Sgt. Pepper” remix scored a perfect 100 on Metacritic.com’s aggregate review website for the fresh perspective on that rock masterpiece brought about by Martin and his collaborators at Abbey Road, which the Beatles helped turn into arguably the most famous recording studio in the world a half-century ago. Not a day goes by that dozens, sometimes hundreds, of Beatles fans show up at the studio’s iron gate, ever-hopeful to glimpse a Beatle or other rock star working there.”